7 Mistakes Made When Writing An Executive Resume -- And How To Avoid Them

Imagine you are the person at a corporate office who is getting all the executive resumes in for an open executive position. You may be getting 50-100 resumes a day, or more. You have to pare them down quickly to the top candidates. How are you going to do it? Here is a list of the top executive resume writing mistakes and how to avoid your executive resume going into the trash:

Grammar – Executive recruiters and HR resume recipients alike say they are amazed at the poor grammar that comes in on resumes. They are immediately second-guessing the professionalism of a person who cannot figure out where to put punctuation in sentences.

Typos – Even worse than grammar mistakes are typos. It looks lazy and like you didn't care enough about getting the job to look over your writing a second time before sending it out.

Small Type – You may be trying to fit as many words as you can on a few pages, but small type is annoying, hard to read, and is going to be passed over by the recruiter or executive who has sore eyes after reading hundreds of other resumes.

Objectives – When a company is searching for an executive, they don't want to know what your objectives are, they want to know how you will help their company. Instead, they want to see a personal profile, listing your qualities and how you can make them more successful.

Rambling – Many people try to put too much in a resume to be impressive. You are going to get an initial 30 seconds or so on a recruiter or HR person's desk to impress them. If your resume is not succinct and clear, they're not going to swim through all the words to try and figure out why they should keep you in the running, they'll just move on to someone else.

Opinions – Most companies don't want to know your personal opinions on things like politics, religion, and other hot-button topics. Even if the company has a political stance, the person reading your resume may think differently and not move your resume forward.

Enhancing – Almost everyone has done it - adding a little more oomph to their resume. Usually this is done by enhancing part of your career past. Don't do it. At the executive level they will check out your claims. If they find you were lying, even a little bit, you've lost trust and the job.